1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to a separator for separating at least two liquids that are immiscible with each other and that contain solids having a higher specific weight than the heavier one of the liquids. More particularly, the present invention is directed to a separator which comprises a conic drum in which separating means are arranged and into which an inlet tube, a paring disc and an outlet tube project.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Liquids occurring in chemical processes generally have some particulate solid impurities, for example rust particles, insoluble salts, and the like, the concentration of which is in a range of a few per mill to fraction of one percent. Due to their low concentration, these solids are generally insignificant in further processing and may therefore remain suspended in the liquid without adversely affects further processing operations. However, upon the separation of liquids in a separator, these solid impurities are inevitably separated with the heavier liquid when they have a higher specific weight than the heavier one of the two liquids. Depending on the relative concentration of such solids, the separator drum is filled more or less rapidly with them, eventually inhibiting further separation of the liquids. Therefore, the separators require frequent cleaning, which cleaning requires tedious and extensive, manual work and results in a considerable decrease in the capacity of the separator.
Self-cleaning separators are known the drum of which has slots or nozzles which can be opened either manually or automatically whenever a sludge chamber thereof has filled. However, in the event that large quantities of solids are present, these separators fail to work as intended, because the solid particles bake tightly with one another during the separation operations in such a manner that they do not leave the drum when the cleaning slots are opened. The use of nozzles has been proposed for solving this problem but has not successful, because the nozzles could not control the separation process.
A further disadvantage in the state-of-the-art separators in their failure to work properly when the melting point of one or both of the components is at a certain level above room temperature. While according to other physical or physico-chemical processes these components are easy to handle in the liquid phase obtained by keeps the material above its melting point, separation by separators of these components in liquid phase has not been possible because the design of known separators does not permit them to be heatable.